Phoolkumari: FM for children

Her friendly voice recites poems for kids and she is a RJ for the kids on her own hindi radio channel – PhoolKumari! With rave reviews and a growing tribe of followers from mommies all over the world her fan following is here to grow. This week Phoolkumari talks to Tiger.

Hello Phoolkumari! Can you introduce yourself?Namaskar 🙂 Phoolkumari is a fictitious character, a daughter of nature and magician! She loves children and children love her! Children like to hear stories, poems and plays from her.

What is your actual name? Tell me about your childhood.My name is Megha. I am from Kota, Rajasthan. I am the eldest of two daughters. I am a designer from profession and an artist by heart. I believe in design as a problem solving process and am interested in solving social problems through system thinking. I completed my Bachelors in Fine Arts from Kota and did my Masters in Design from IDC, IIT Bombay. and went on to work in the corporate world. I was very playful and artistic from my younger days and grew up interacting with artisans, village art and craft. I just love children and art. I tried to combine my love and passion in my work.

Tell me about your first venture. I found my first company right after college. Crafting Nuru was created to help traditional artisans work on their design principles, skills and economics. We were working with an organization called Rangasutra who helped us in funding and setting up schools to bring the traditional artisans and training.We helped set up five schools and worked on preparing curriculum, study plan,trained teachers, taught communication skills. Each school had 20-25 students and most of them are working with companies like Fab India and are churning out the designs of tomorrow.

What is Nuru in CraftingNuru?Nuru is an imaginary bird of happiness. I created the name as this bird appears when you are genuinely happy and sings pleasant songs for you and disappears when you are sad. I believe we have to encourage this little Nuru in our lives to ensure happiness is abound and children should be introduced to this bird. With all my artwork and passion I want to ensure there is happiness all around.

How was Phoolkumari born? Tell me about the idea.I was a RJ for FM Radio7 in our college and all the students and staff used to love my program. My professional experience lies in core-visual communication design: Graphic, web-design and film & video communication. I also have experience in working with children – taking creative workshops and courses for them. I am interested in innovation in primary-education and designing products for children. Most of my colleagues used to ask me to record poems on their mobile so they can play them to their kids. My hubby Amber Maheshwari suggested using whatsapp to share audio clips with multiple people and I started doing that. These were very well received both by kids and parents. I saw that there was a vacuum in storytelling space and started this channel.

How is the response? Are you on facebook? Where else can we find you?Frankly response has been overwhelming. I have just started out and didn’t expect such a positive response from far and wide. I am in the process of loading poems regularly and you can find my poems on my soundcloud account here: https://soundcloud.com/phoolkumari or on my facebook page: Phoolkumari.radio.

You are into so many things Megha. What other hobbies do you have?Yes though I am involved in many things, I am not busy. I am designing for children, storytelling, experience design, design thinking and management.

What next for Phoolkumari? Future plans?We are in the process of designing an app for downloading and playing rhymes for tablets and phones.

We are also working on an exciting project called ThoughtCanvas which will work on social, experiential, interaction and communication design for kids.

As we concluded the conversation I could clearly hear the joyous chirping of Nuru and Megha’s laughter sync with the flutter of its wings. All the best Megha or should I call Phoolkumari!

Introduce your kids to good traditional hindi stories and rhymes and you can also post your requests and with her magic flower Phoolkumari will fulfill your request on the show!